Adoption
Considering adoption
DH and I been looking into adoption more serious lately. Other then FAQ's on the board, any other good resources? I know its a long process, so we figured we start our research now and figure out our best options. For those that have adopted or are trying currently, what is some best advice you could give? Costs associated? Trying to get a rough estimate to start saving. Not sure on age of child, could be infant or older, DH and I haven't thought that much into yet. Its been nice to read about everyone's posts.
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Re: Considering adoption
The questions you pose are actually great questions to start discussing at home.
What ages are you open to? Race and ethnicity? Do you have a budget?
Since these factors may help you decide what sort of adoption to pursue, having a sense of what you think would work best for your family may help you make steps forward. For example, if you are only open to a newborn, you would probably not want to explore International Adoption. Or if keeping costs under $10K is important, then you will need to look at certain programs.
Other things to study would be drug exposure, alcohol exposure, and mental illness. If you can start learning about these issues, you can start deciding your comfort level (we didn't spend enough time on this and later as it snuck up on us, we were overwhelmed).
Lastly, see if there are agencies in your city. I wouldn't necessarily suggest that you limit yourself to the agency but often times the agency will have an open house or informational seminar and it's a great place to go just to get information. We attended seminars and lectures at once agency but never used them.
Good luck!
We learned a lot just by talking to different agencies as well as adoptive parents. A lot of people on here recommend the book Adoption for Dummies. I read a lot on adoption.com and read adoption blogs, which were very helpful in learning about the process.
As far as advice, I would say to be sure to carefully define your priorities. Obviously you want a child, but what is most important - budget, time frame, race, health/pre-natal care/no drug exposure, sex of the baby, etc. Talk to professionals and adoptive couples and make sure your priorities and expectations are realistic. For example, if you have a budget of $15,000 and want to adopt a caucasian female from a birth mother who had excellent prenatal care and took great care of herself during pregnancy, and expect it to happen in less than a year, you would need to adjust your expectations because this is unlikely to happen. If you want a fast adoption, you need to spend more money. If you want a less expensive adoption, you may need to be open about race. It's important to determine what really matters to you, and this will help you choose which route to go (agency, facilitator/consultant, private adoption, or foster care).
Costs widely range depending on the type of adoption and specific circumstances. If you are able to locate your own birth mother and don't use an agency, you could spend as little as $5,000. This is what we tried at first because we wanted to keep costs down, but networking to find our own birth mother wasn't really working out and we wanted the process to move quicker. Adopting through foster care can be free or just a few thousand dollars. The least expensive agency we found was a flat fee of $18,500 (or $10,000 for African American children). Some agencies have a sliding scale, and many allow adoptive parents to pay birth mother expenses such as rent, groceries, and more. I never added it all up, but I estimate that we spent around $40,000, which included a consultant, home study, agency fee, birth mother expenses, and travel expenses (we were in Las Vegas for 19 days). We decided that we just wanted a baby quickly, so ended up going with a more expensive option. We had a baby 8 weeks after signing up with our consultant. I attribute our quick match to three things: using a consultant who networks all around the country instead of limiting ourselves to one agency, being open about race (our child is biracial), and throwing the budget out the window and considering even expensive situations.
Good luck with your research and on your adoption journey!!
Thanks
And thank you for all of your advice. This will be the first adoption for either of our sides of our family, so its something that its a bit of a touchy subject. Definitely will contact an agency nearby to see what are our options and go from there.
I think the FAQs are a very good start to get you going, and you can always come back with more specific questions.
The best advice I could give is to take your time, make sure you're both on the same page, have lots of patience, and find an agency/lawyer/facilitator you can trust.
Cost vary so much I couldn't possibly give you a ballpark. We saw ranges for domestic infant adoption from $17K to $46K when we were doing our research.